


downtime

by orphan_account



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Depression, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, friends trying to figure out what to do when their friend is unresponsive, how many tags is the norm to even use for hawke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 04:02:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3160448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anders is avoidant. Justice is helping him be. And Hawke doesn't know how to deal with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	downtime

“I want to talk to your host, Justice,” Hawke said, and it hurt to say because Anders had insisted for so long _we are one_ but now his eyes were strange – magic, Hawke knew what a glamour looked like, felt it like looking at the sun but not – and more importantly, were never tender now, always creased with that certain agitation that Hawke had known for three years heralded blue cracks in his skin, the energy of the Fade spilling out past the veil.

The spirit wearing his friend like a coat sighed. “He is not ready.”

“Why?” Hawke begged. At this point, he was not above it. “What in the world happened when he – when you – what _happened_?”

Their healer had been incommunicado for two weeks. Two long weeks, the first few days of which Hawke had assumed to be coincidence and then, after, turned into desperate attempts at feeling out what had happened without tipping his hand, because Anders' life was in a precarious position at the best of times.

“He worries that this will be the last straw,” the spirit said, with the voice of someone who found the notion to be distasteful, who knew it not to be true – because, apparently, the volatile spirit had given Hawke some iota of his respect. “That you will find him repulsive, where before you had not.”

“Is he listening right now?” he implored.

“No.”

Hawke made a wordless sound of frustration, and for a split second, Justice's lips quirked. It was achingly familiar, because Anders had no sense of humor if it wasn't a distinctly rueful one. At least he wasn't the only one pissed off that Anders was running away, he supposed, but –

“You're enabling this,” he accused. “There's a spell over your eyes. To try and make it all look _normal_. People tell me the healer's been working just as much as he always does. If you're going to make it comfortable for him to keep hiding from the world, do you expect he's ever going to stop?”

Justice bristled more with every word out of his mouth, and Hawke thought,  _good._ If the spirit decided to rip him a new one, he knew Anders couldn't just sit idly by, knew that, at the very least, there would be a struggle before he had his ass royally handed to him in ten separate pieces.

“You presume to know what's best for the man better than I, Hawke. That forcing him to an impasse is the correct solution. Do you think I have not entertained the notion? That it is not the first avenue I seized upon? It is not the right thing to do. Nor is it the _fair_ one.”

But Hawke didn't get what he wanted. It should have been a good sign to see Justice display a measure of temperance. It didn't feel good. He felt himself beginning to deflate, anxious energy giving way to a hollow feeling; was he to accomplish nothing here?

“I'm selfish,” Hawke finally admitted, “which means I'm usually not all that fair. I want him _back_. It's been weeks, and – and nothing!”

“It is not for you to decide. I will lend him many weeks more if that is what is needed.”

Of course. Because the spirit had made up his mind, and was nothing if not sheer, bloody-mindedly stubborn.

His voice cracked. “What would you have me do, Justice?!”

The spirit looked away, and Hawke feared that was it, the conversation was over. He was about to be sent away to do nothing but wait, more powerless than ever to do anything for his altogether _absent_ friend.

“He fears, more than anything, to lose what he has here.” The spirit's words came careful and slow. “That if he were to speak, you would be driven away from him. Show that your support will not be revoked so easily.”

“So pretend like everything is _normal_ ,” he hissed. “Like you're doing. And then he'll come back?”

Justice looked him in the eyes, too bright and too  _brown_ and almost too everything, really. “Perhaps it will not remain the answer. But for now. Yes.”

“Fine!” Hawke threw up his hands and turned to stalk out, but before he crossed the threshold of the empty clinic, he called back over his shoulder – “Normal isn't leaving you here to coo over colds all day, you know. Tomorrow I have _business_ outside Kirkwall. Business that deserves to have a few fireballs shoved up their nostrils. Will you come?”

“I make no promises,” was the answer, but Hawke could detect a flicker of interest.

 

Maybe he could do this. And maybe, in the end, this would be better for Anders – especially since it seemed his inconsolable  _other half_ was being forced by circumstance to be less so.

**Author's Note:**

> Playing through the game I often stop, point at Anders, and go, “That's me,” over some of his more distressing lines; stuff like “you've been a better friend than I deserve” hits right here because, shit, dude, you're a depressed mess. My own experiences with being a depressed mess often take the form of “i'm going to avoid EVERYTHING & EVERYONE FOREVER,” and I wanted to write something as to how it would go if he ended up doing that, and especially how Justice might be forced to handle it, because screaming angrily about wrongs going unrighted at someone who cannot even will themselves to a basic conversation without breaking down in fear of messing up everything, ever, doesn't really work, and I'd think it'd be even more obvious it doesn't work when you're literally in their head.


End file.
